


I Have Never Put My Hope In Any Other

by bomberqueen17



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Cultural Differences, Friendship, Gen, Music, alien tech
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 03:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1966938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wrote this ages ago, then as I was polishing it, discovered that the song in question, which is my favorite thing in the world, got used in the soundtrack of a particularly abhorrent movie. As an "erotic" or "romantic" track. What. It is. What. A hymn. About. About the God of Israel. Like. What. But if you search for it (I was looking for a good translation of the lyrics), that's all that comes up. (*cough*Fifty Shades of Noncon*cough*)<br/>This took my brain comprehensively offline for like, a year, and I never posted this.<br/>And then I read it again and, well, it's like a lot of things that rely on music but are textual, it doesn't make a ton of sense if you aren't listening to the music at the time. It was kind of an exercise in description with the excuse of characterization, if that makes sense.<br/>But it is the SGA 10th Anniversary fest, and, well, I wrote it, so I should put it up for someone to read. There's probably at least one other person in the world who has devoted an inordinate amount of time to considering how Teyla would react to Earth music.<br/>(If that is you, hi! Cozy in here, isn't it?)</p>
<p>No plot, particularly, just a team togetherness vignette, Teyla POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Have Never Put My Hope In Any Other

**Author's Note:**

> Spem in alium nunquam habui  
> Praeter in te, Deus Israel  
> Qui irasceris et propitius eris  
> et omnia peccata hominum  
> in tribulatione dimitis  
> Domine Deus  
> Creator caeli et terrae  
> respice humilitatem nostram
> 
> I have never put my hope in any other  
> but in You,  
> O God of Israel  
> who can show both anger and graciousness,  
> and who absolves all the sins  
> of suffering man  
> Lord God,  
> Creator of Heaven and Earth  
> be mindful of our lowliness
> 
> [Listen on Youtube: Tallis Scholars](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CDUQtwIwAg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DiT-ZAAi4UQQ&ei=_IPGU4-lAYemyATznIGQBg&usg=AFQjCNHEVxl0L8l5TMwjcmOXHp6XMWc9xw&sig2=IFIIhMk38vCb10Lih2D_sw&bvm=bv.71126742,d.aWw)

Teyla had been much impressed with Earth music, but the problem was that, apart from the songs people sang in the shower, all of the music she had heard had been recorded, and played back on speakers that were… well, she may have come from a society that eschewed advanced technology, but she had still heard better. 

One day Rodney radioed her and asked her to come to a part of the city she’d never been in before. It was off the normal paths she took, in a sector she’d never visited before. She followed his directions down a hallway and found that Sheppard and Ronon were already there, standing outside a door. 

“He’s in there,” Sheppard said, “but he told us to wait here a minute.”

“Do you know what this is about?” Teyla asked. 

Sheppard shook his head and leaned back against the wall. They’d been grounded a while because of his injuries, and Ronon’s, but both of them looked all right. There was still a hitch in John’s movement, if you knew him well, but Ronon showed no sign. What Rodney had been up to all that time, Teyla didn’t know.

The door hissed open and Sheppard twitched in startlement, to Ronon’s amusement. “Shut up,” John said, smacking Ronon’s shoulder.

“Didn’t say anything, Sheppard,” Ronon said. 

“Come on,” Rodney said at the door, and turned around, going back into the room. 

“Oh,” Teyla said, astonished, and looked up and around to see an enormous room. It had a high ceiling, a hundred feet or more, and its walls were heavily studded with geometric stained-glass windows, tapering in a spectrum from blue through red to yellow, like a sunrise. 

“Wow,” John said, sounding floored. He paced slowly out to the center of the room, turning on his heel, looking up. Ronon moved more cautiously, scanning the floor level for other entrances. Teyla paced almost in his shadow, but not quite, far enough away that a single machine-gun burst wouldn’t cut her down too. She was aware of this only after she’d taken up her position, and her mouth curved in a rueful smile to see how ingrained this was. She hadn’t always been like this, had she? 

“Stand in the middle,” Rodney said from the shadows near the door. “And wait a second.”

Teyla looked over at Sheppard, who was frowning. “I don’t think there’s any ATA tech active in here,” he said. 

“No,” Rodney said, “there isn’t. But there’s Earth tech, I just set it up. Give me a second.”

A strange high-pitched sound floated out into the blue-tinged air, joined a moment later by a second— voices, human voices, Teyla realized. Recorded, but so well played-back that they sounded real. They were singing words, words Teyla didn’t know— sounded vaguely like Ancient but it wasn’t. The two alto voices were joined by several more in different harmony lines, and abruptly the music filled out with a bass and a baritone line, four or five alto lines, and a soaring soprano, none singing in unison but all twining around one another in four- or five-part harmony. 

“Pretty,” Sheppard said. 

“Quiet,” Rodney snapped. 

The sound filled out incrementally; now it was coming not just from their left, but from behind them as well, gradually increasing in volume and fullness. A soprano’s voice soared, a second twining around it, and it speared something in Teyla’s chest, almost pain but not, exquisite and transfixing. 

The sound was to their right now, too, fuller and fuller, several baritones, a swelling chorus of dozens of voices, the entire range of human voices, all clear and pure and ebbing and flowing together, now all in a crescendo, now falling back down to a quieter passage, but never less intense, never alone. 

There was one soprano now with a primary melody, but others chanted, quieter, behind that voice, having their own duets, never in unison, never any two on the same word or note. Occasionally they intersected to make chords, but mostly they all moved independently, as if they were each singing their own songs, but there was never a dissonant moment. 

All coordinated, all rose together into crescendos, swelling in volume and complexity. There was no rhythm, to speak of, no tempo, no obvious downbeats, but all moved together on the same floating, implied tempo, implicit in the intersections of their phrases, driving and deliberate but never explicit.

There was a ringing pause as every voice reached the end of a phrase at the same instant, a space of breathing that resonance left not quite silence, and all resumed simultaneously but on different notes, different melody or harmony lines, different phrases, different words, all twining around one another and touching but not connecting. 

Another crescendo, gradual, tapering off; a few of the tenors were in concert with the altos, two groups of them almost in call-and-response. Now it was more like several four- or five-part choirs, all around them, singing back and forth to one another, simultaneous but not in unison, sliding past one another to make chords as if without premeditation. 

Another resonant pause; most of the choirs were on the same phrase, though different melody lines, but still in the background some voices chanted their own words, faint susurration of consonants and quiet, almost distracted resonance of vowels, as if the divergent singers were speaking to themselves, and each melody line spun out separate, sopranos spiraling up around one another and never quite touching, sliding past one another to make harmonies. 

Again, a pause, less urgent; the music was slower, softer, and they all resumed together, meditative, considering. It swelled again, slowly, slowly, slowly, louder, deeper, melodies diverging and taking their harmonies with them. All spun around one another, more and more intense, basses vibrating behind the breastbone and sopranos making the spine shiver, clear resonance climbing the hairs on the back of the neck, and gradually other rhythms fell away until it was a massive chord, massive, all on a single syllable but dozens of different notes, swelling to a crescendo. 

 

Then suddenly, silence. 

 

Teyla took a gasping breath, finally, coming back to herself, and swayed a little, pressing inadvertently against John’s body. He was shaking, and she turned her head to see that he was still staring, awestruck, at nothing, and there were tears on his face. He collected himself, wiped his face, and looked at her. 

“That was Thomas Tallis’s doctoral thesis,” Rodney said. “Titled _Spem in Alium_ , it is a motet for forty voices. He composed it sometime around 1570, most likely for the court of Queen Elizabeth. It was first performed in an octagonal room with balconies, and it is thought that four of the eight five-part choirs stood on those balconies to perform it in the round for a central audience.”

Teyla remembered that in the Earth reckoning it was two thousand and six or seven, meaning that 1570 would have been a very long time ago. “What does it mean?” she asked. 

“It’s a religious song.  _I have never put my hope in any other but in you, God of Israel_ ,” Rodney said. Teyla rather thought he was reading from his computer screen. “The lyrics speak of being humble, but the piece itself is so incredibly ambitious—“ 

“No talking,” Ronon said suddenly, and wrapped his arms around John, tugging him backwards against his chest. John went weird and stiff for a moment, as he always did, but relaxed as soon as he had his balance back, letting his shoulder blades rest against Ronon’s chest, one hand wrapping around Ronon’s forearm. 

Rodney came out to the middle of the floor, and Teyla smiled at him. “Thank you,” she said quietly, and took his hands in hers. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, say hi on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/bomberqueen17)!


End file.
